From: Dick Davies Date: 2004-11-02T23:47:33+09:00 Subject: Re: [OT] US Presidential Election * Thomas Kirchner [1143 13:43]: > On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 09:18:12PM +0900, Richard Kilmer wrote: > > Bush, with conviction ;-) > > Bush, with just as much conviction. [ not flamebait, but will probably offend some - let me make it clear I'm anti-bush (this bush, not his old man and not particularly anti- republican, though I'm certainly left of centre). ] Oh dear, I meant to bite my lip but I have to ask - Why??? I'm only asking because most people I've spoken to on this side of the pond (of all political persuasions) can't understand why you put up with him. And a lot of you (who I regard as intelligent) seem to support him, which I find totally baffling. He appears to be at best a bit of a monkey (illiterate, slack jawed, etc - see testimonies at http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=427 ) and at worst a puppet of the multinationals who bought him the election (the wire thing springs most readily to mind). See resume at: http://monkeydyne.com/bushresume/resume.html The whole Ir*q thing seemed to be a frantic effort to be seen to be doing something about 9/11, with a huge conventional army but an isolationist stance that meant the were no Arabic intelligence sources to actually track down the real threat. Being so bloody minded as to alienate the whole world over the WMD nonsense and then having the cheek to say 'wow, there weren't any. Who'd have guessed? Still, can you all help clean up our messes?' to the world as a whole. And just his general worldview of 'you are either with us or with the enemy' is truly frightening. If you can't disagree with someone without being labelled an appeaser (or cheese-eating surrender monkey ISTR) then how are you any better than their slave ? And though I'm not anti-religion the fundamentalism is also deeply worrying. Has he done something useful on a national level? i thought your economy had gone tits up (though of course no other country is going to bring that up unless they fancy a global recession). A knee-jerk reaction is that the terrorist threat is being abused for political purposes , in a 'see how hard we can bomb people who may or may not be terrorists' and plays into the hands of every totalitarian regime across the world who can suddenly label political dissidents as terrorist groups and count on massive funding and or weapons to suppress their own people. If Kerry gets in I'd hope his margin would be small enough that both sides would have some kind of sway and you guys could get on with attacking your real enemies. If Bush gets in then I'm afraid he'll see it as a green light for continuing his more objectionable policies. Small margin wont' kerb him at all (it was negative last time, after all). Sadly I think he's probably got it because he's engineered such a huge anti-american feeling abroad that the old 'rally around the flag' impulse will override sense. Plus despite being a lousy world leader, he didn't skimp on his electoral team and pulled no punches. I expect I'm going to regret sending this but screw it. This guy is seriously dangerous. "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials -- Bender, Ship, stop arguing or I'll come back there and change your opinions manually. - Leela Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns